The cost of a conventional display system may be lowered by reducing the number of tone scale levels of pixels within image data. An exemplary imaging system includes image data that is to be displayed may contain 24 bits of information, with eight bits each being reserved for red, green, and blue tone values. Many conventional display systems are able to display the image data at the color depth resolution at which the image data was stored
A typical method for reducing the cost of a display system is to limit the resolution of the digital-to-analog converters that are used to produce a video signal. Thus, pixel tone values are truncated when the resolution of the tone values exceeds the resolution of the digital-to-analog converter used in a display system. However, truncated pixel tone values often result in perceptible, abrupt changes in tone in displayed images. Dithering may be used to reduce the perceptibility of using truncated pixel tone values.